1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer-implemented rules engine. More particularly, it concerns a method and system that allows end-users to process documents according to rules, based on the content of documents, and to execute actions, dependent upon how the rules evaluate.
2. Description of the Related Art
While there have been other rules engines, they all rely on meta data. Meta data based rule engines require that documents be pre-processed to obtain the meta data or that meta data be manually specified by an end-user. This meta data is then fed to the rule engine for evaluation.
Thus, a document to be routed according to a conventional system would include, for example, a header containing the data relevant to routing. Further, a document intended to be handled in accordance with certain security rules would include a header containing security-related data. A conventional header would include data related to other actions to be taken (or not taken) on a document.
Pre-processing of the document is used to determine the data or meta data to be placed in a header, or otherwise stored outside of the document contents, but associated with the document. Thus, in routing a document or otherwise action on a document, the pre-processed meta data is principally used.
According to the invention, there is provided a method and system for determining, in a computerized system, document content based actions. A rule engine is provided with a document to be acted on, the document having document content, wherein the document content is defined to include at least one delimited content field, and the document is defined to be in XML format. A rule grammar, including at least one rule operator, at least one constant, and at least one content field, is provided. The rule engine is provided with a set of rules and associated actions to be taken upon special conditions; wherein at least one rule in the set of rules includes at least a specified rule operator, a specified constant, and a specified content field; and a plurality of rule objects, a rule object containing a rule of the set of rules, and referencing one or more next rules to execute based on an evaluation of the document against the rule, and referencing one or more actions to be initiated based on the evaluation;. The document is evaluated according to the rules and the document contents; each of the rules is parsed into a parse tree, the document is further evaluated, including, for the provided document, populating the parse tree with at least a portion of the document contents, to create a content-populated parse tree. The content-populated parse tree is evaluated to a determinant. At least a portion of the actions associated with the rules, the portion of the actions to be initiated is selected based on the determinant.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention are readily apparent from the following drawings and detailed description.